Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 41/2: 387–404 © 2014 Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture review article Ishii Shūdō’s Contributions to Dōgen Studies Examining Chinese Influences on theKana and Kanbun Texts Steven Heine After an eminent career lasting more than forty years, Ishii Shūdō 石井修道 (1943–) recently retired from the Faculty of Buddhist Studies at Komazawa Uni- versity, the largest academic department of its kind in Japan (and thus, indeed, in the world). He currently serves as director of the Matsugaoka Bunko 松ヶ岡 文 庫 (Pine Hill Library), a prestigious archive of Zen resources located in Kamakura that was founded in 1945 by Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966). Although perhaps less known in the West than some other luminary postwar Japanese scholars of Chan/Zen Buddhism—especially Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山 (1922–2006) and Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高 (1910–1998), with whom he studied and collaborated for a time while conducting seminars at the Zen Bunka Kenkyūjo 禅文化研究所 (The Institute for Zen Studies) in Kyoto—Ishii may well be just as or, in some ways, even more important than these former colleagues. As seen from current cross-cultural scholarly perspectives regarding methodologies for interpreting East Asian Buddhist texts, his ongoing research is particularly notable for pro- ducing an exceptionally large body of publications that make enormous contri- butions to the field through examining, with great insight and innovation, key Steven Heine is professor of Religious Studies and History and director of Asian Studies at Florida International University. 387 388 | Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 41/2 (2014) elements in the formation and transformation of the classical Zen tradition in both Chinese and Japanese intellectual historical settings. Ishii’s Role in Postwar Studies of Zen This article provides a very brief overview of some of the highlights of Ishii’s overall accomplishments, including his investigations of crucial developments in Zen texts during the Tang and Song dynasties. This is no doubt the main achieve- ment of a career that features more than a dozen books (including monographs and edited volumes) as well as over two hundred articles in print, many of which are quite substantial in length and are, in themselves, groundbreaking in scope and content. Given Ishii’s prolific record of publications, there is no reason in this short article to attempt to be comprehensive in evaluating the full extent of his research. Instead, the aim here is to underline a few key points in a selective, representative way as a kind of memorandum of appreciation, while also taking into account with a critical eye some of the paths not taken or shortcomings that may be evident in his corpus. My primary aim is to offer a compressed summary of Ishii’s contributions to various aspects of studies of the life and thought of Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 (1200– 1253), founder of the Japanese Sōtō sect 曹洞宗 (Ch. Caodong zong). Dōgen trav- eled for four years from 1223–1227 to China, where, under the tutelage of master Rujing 如淨 (Jp. Nyojō, 1162–1228), he gained enlightenment through the expe- rience of shinjin datsuraku 身心脱落, or “casting off body-mind.” Following his return to Japan, Dōgen composed two main collections of sermons: the Kana [or vernacular] Shōbōgenzō 仮字正法眼蔵, which contains informal sermons (jishu) in Japanese that were mainly delivered during the period while he taught at Kōshōji temple in Kyoto and first traveled to the remote mountains of Echizen province, but before the establishment of Eiheiji temple in 1244;1 and the Eihei kōroku 永平広録, which contains 531 formal sermons (jōdō) in the first seven of ten volumes that were given in the Dharma Hall in kanbun (Sino-Japanese), first at Kōshōji (volume one contains 126 sermons) beginning in 1236 but primarily in the 1240s while Dōgen was residing at Eiheiji (volumes two through seven). Ishii’s expertise is especially evident in his highly specialized research on two fairly obscure Dōgen texts that he has used to illuminate larger issues in the history of Dōgen’s writings in relation to Chinese Chan. One is the Mana [or kanbun] Shōbōgenzō 真字正法眼蔵 (1988), a collection of 300 kōan 公案 (Ch. gongan) cases produced in 1235 without commentary. Ishii shows that this text is crucial for understanding both the Kana Shōbōgenzō and Eihei kōroku in terms of how Dōgen appropriated and furnished novel, idiosyncratic interpretations of 1. The newly built temple was first named Daibutsuji and was renamed Eiheiji in 1246. heine: ishii shūdō | 389 hundreds of encounter dialogues in ways that often differed from previous ver- sions in mainstream Chinese commentaries. The other text examined by Ishii is “Gyōji” (Sustained Practice; Ishii 2007; Heine 2008), a fascicle (usually divided into two sections) that is included in the Kana Shōbōgenzō and functions as a transmission manual indicating how Dōgen viewed his inheritance of lineage from Chinese masters, including those from Caodong and other streams of Zen. Although the two Dōgen texts analyzed in great depth by Ishii may appear quite different or nearly opposite in terms of their respective orientations—one is a comprehensive compilation of dialogues, and the other a compendium of sacred biographies of ancestors—Ishii demonstrates the extent to which these writings are linked by Dōgen’s intimate familiarity and distinctive adoption of Chinese masters’ teachings. Dōgen adapts and often radically reinterprets the textual sources that depict the peaks of their religious attainment and express the styles of their pedagogy as passed on to disciples, who in turn take their place in the family tree. Ishii specifies that Dōgen sought to introduce and explicate Chinese materi- als in a highly condensed yet evocative and compelling way for an audience of Japanese monks at a time when Zen’s voluminous production of written records composed in rarified Song-dynasty literary language was practically unknown and would have seemed exotic and obscure. The Mana Shōbōgenzō and “Gyōji” texts serve as hermeneutic vehicles that enable Ishii to use his own mastery of Chinese sources to infuse an examination of the Japanese founder’s efforts to at once inform and reform his rapidly growing monastic communities at Kōshōji and Eiheiji. This was during a period of government oversight of all religious groups as well as intense competition with the mainstream Tendai church cen- tered on Mount Hiei in addition to other emerging sects of the new Kamakura Buddhism, including the Rinzai 臨濟 (Ch. Linji) and fledgling Daruma-shū 達磨宗 schools that were both affiliated with, or represented, branches of Zen. Furthermore, Ishii’s major study of developments in Song-dynasty Zen (1988) includes an important section on the impact of Caodong predecessors Hongzhi 宏智 (Jp. Wanshi, 1091–1157) and Rujing 如淨 (Jp. Nyōjo, 1162–1228), along with Linji school rival Dahui 大慧 (1089–1163), on the formation of Dōgen’s thought. Ishii also wrote numerous lengthy articles on many different aspects of Dōgen’s collected writings. In another major book (Ishii 1991a), Ishii examined Dōgen’s distinctive approach to Zen by entering into controversial debates that were taking place among scholars at Komazawa University at the time concerning an innova- tive interpretative approach known as Critical Buddhism (hihan Bukkyō 批判 仏教). This method, pioneered by Hakamaya Noriaki 袴谷憲昭 and Matsumoto Shirō 松本史郞 in the mid-1980s as a response to questions regarding social dis- crimination (sabetsu mondai) and other societal ills that infected Japanese Bud- 390 | Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 41/2 (2014) dhism, including the Sōtō sect, featured discussions of how Dōgen underwent an apparent “change of heart” (henka) about the essence of Zen practice in his later years (Hubbard and Swanson 1997). Seemingly disillusioned by the lack of strict ethics that transpired when Zen spirituality was compromised through interactions with the everyday life of ordinary society following an unsuccess- ful six-month visit in 1246–1247 to meet Hōjō Tokiyori 北条時頼 in Kamakura, where he turned down the shogun’s invitation to become abbot of a new temple to be built there (Kenchōji 建長寺), Dōgen then began to put a greater emphasis on the notion of karmic causality (inga 因果). According to Critical Buddhism, this ethical teaching was reflected in a newer Dōgen text from the late 1240s referred to as the 12-fascicle Shōbōgenzō 十二巻正 法眼蔵 that was designed to correct antinomian implications implicit in the doc- trine of the universality of absolute Buddha-nature, which was the foundation of the 75-fascicle Shōbōgenzō 七十五巻正法眼蔵. The 75-fascicle rendition had long been considered the mainstream version of the Kana Shōbōgenzō, but it is by no means the exclusive edition of a text whose structure and dissemination evolved over the centuries, with 60-fascicle and 28-fascicle editions, among others, also playing important roles. Borrowing yet reshaping some of his colleagues’ ideas and ideals, seven of the ten chapters in Ishii’s monograph use the term hihan 批判 in the title in order to highlight Dōgen’s criticism of various ideologies that reflect some of the flaws of the Buddha-nature doctrine as expressed by 1. Zongmi Guifeng’s analysis of Tang-dynasty Chan; 2. key notions in Song-dynasty Chan such as the incor- poration of nianfo recitation; and 3. this-worldly beliefs of the Daruma-shū, which was proscribed by government edict for apparently deliberated trans- gressions of the precepts. In addition, according to Ishii, Dōgen refuted sev- eral problematic notions that were typically part of the Zen thought of his era, including 4. “seeing into one’s own-nature” (kenshō 見性); 5. “five ranks” (goi 五 位); 6. “original and acquired Buddhahood” (honrai jōbutsu 本来成仏); and 7. notions of “spiritualism” (reishō 霊性). Moreover, Ishii’s book provides a critical edition and discussion of the Japanese yomikudashi rendition of the main text attributed to Daruma-shū founder Dainichi Nōnin 大日房能忍 (d.